Many Promises

Sheila Fitzpatrick

  • BuyThe People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years by Simon Morrison
    Oxford, 491 pp, £18.99, November 2008, ISBN 978 0 19 518167 8

It is generally assumed that Soviet composers like Prokofiev and Shostakovich were forced by the regime to simplify their style and write ‘life-affirming’ music that conformed to the canons of Socialist Realism. Most people think this was bad for their music, though a few hold the contrary. Now comes the shocker from Simon Morrison, a Princeton musicologist: Prokofiev wanted to write simple, life-affirming music because he was a Christian Scientist.

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